Installing XCrysDen

1. download the package from the XCrySDen web site: www.xcrysden.org. Choose a binary distribution of the most recent version (the pre-release of the 1.65 version) for 32-bit Linux PC's. The "semishared" version you find here should be fine: it uses shared libraries, but comes with a copy of the needed shared libraries that are not present by default in a typical Linux distribution (e.g. tcl/tk and OpenGL/Mesa). In case some libraries are missing, you need either to install them , or to use the static version.
2. Uncompress and unpackage the file, for instance:

           tar -zxvf XCrySDen-1.5.17-bin-semishared.tar.gz
   	

   Some machines may not support the "z" flag (meaning "uncompress files compressed by gzip"). In this case

           gunzip XCrySDen-1.5.17-bin-semishared.tar.gz
           tar -xvf XCrySDen-1.5.17-bin-semishared.tar
   	

   A directory "XCrySDen-1.5.17-bin-semishared/" will be created, containing many files and other directories.
3. This version does not require any further configuration option, unless you have some special requirements. Just add the location of the "xcrysden" esecutable to your $PATH.
4. Now you can type "xcrysden" to run the executable. In particular, you can verify the atomic positions of an input data file for PWscf by running the command "xcrysden --pwi input-data-for-pwscf". This is especially useful to verify the correctness of an input. The command "xcrysden --pwo output-from-pwscf" will show the complete sequence of atomic positions of an output. This is especially useful to follow the time evolution in a molecular dynamics run, or the path towards the minimum in a structural optimization.